About Mary Lou

Mary Lou Darst, born in Houston and a retired teacher, grew up as a military dependent traveling the world with her family. She wrote the story of her early life in a memoire “War Ready: In My Father’s Shadow”. As a child she loved exploring nature with her brother. She enjoys taking photos when traveling and when walking in her neighborhood.

She started taking watercolor lessons from Sally Anderson in the mid 1990s while teaching and working on a UH-Clear Lake degree. “I really wanted to know about art, and the art courses gave me a good ‘art work-out’ that included a course in computer graphics.

Fast forward thirty ears, she found herself using a camera. She was thrilled with her initial experience of shooting roses close-up in a Mississippi Garden; later she took photos in Italy, at the Grand Canyon, and in Guatemala. She looks for harmonious colors, forms, and relations in her photos. She plans to keep learning how to use her simple point-and-shoot camera.